Home Run Inn Classic
Son of a
Fine people of the planet earth: never buy Home Run Inn pizza. This shit is very small, very expensive and very bad, too. At its regular price of $4.29 (at Harris Teeter), this is indisputably the most egregiously overpriced pizza ever to grace the pages of this godawful blog. I bought it because I'm a pizza nerd and because it was half-off, so it only cost me $2.15+tax. At that price, it is indisputably the most egregiously overpriced pizza to grace the pages of this godawful blog.
I thought it might be good, too, goddamnit. The picture on the box gives it a passing resemblance to bad NY-style pizza. Which, in the world of frozen pizza, puts this shit in ambrosia territory. But when I retrieved the discus from the lying-cheating-whore-of-a-box it was as if I had come face-to-face with my own mortality. It was like some Norse God came out of bloody nowhere, grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and before I even had time to shit my pants said, "You will never know peace in this world."
After seeing this monstrosity birthed from it's boxy mother I was certain I should have instead spent the two dollars on a kick to my scrotum. Yet, in the back of my mind (and scrotum), I had a faint hope that the application of 450 degrees of Kevin Bacon might turn it into something edible. As usual, the back of my scrotum misled me. This pizza was so fucked.
I baked this thing less than their minimum baking time suggestion and it was already about to be burnt around the edges. I include the box picture alongside the real deal because I know you fucks are too lazy to scroll up and compare for your damn selves. This stupid shitbird pizza looks nothing like that picture. You will notice I added crushed red pepper. Ignore the spicy flakes behind the curtain.
The cheese had this plastic quality that I could not seem to fully appreciate. The sauce wasn't half bad, really. Maybe one of the better frozen pizza sauces I've had. The crust was the most vile thing I've ever tasted. It was dry and chalky and gross. Makes me wonder what kind of nutball committee okayed this monstrosity and thought $4.29 was a good price. Frozen pizzas which I've bought for a buck were bigger and tasted better than this bullshit.
If I had paid full price for this garbage I would have taken one bite and promptly returned it to Harris Teeter. Then I would have bought the rest of their stock and repeated that process ad nauseum. I can say without question that this is the worst 'pizza' I've ever consumed. Which makes sense since Home Run Inn hails from Chicago.
Sbarro
Shitty mall pizza at its most horrendous
I was in the mall the other day, AKA the worst place in the world. I generally abhor malls but the one in Wilmington really takes the shitcake. It's shaped like some derpy octopus. It kind of makes you think you're in a big mall because you have to walk six times more than you ought to in order to traverse the entire blasted thing. With most malls, you just walk in a somewhat linear fashion, and when you get to the end, you've, in the words of Captain Picard, seen it all.
I'd decided to eschew reviewing big chain pizza, but since there is only one Sbarro in town I figured I'd waste some money and review this slice. As a kid I ate Sbarro in Danbury, CT sometimes and I have vaguely fond memories of it. Not because I liked it a lot, though. I think it was because when my parents took me to the mall, I always wanted Sbarro but they would virtually never grant this wish. They would instead throw a stale bagel at my head and tell me to scuba for quarters in the fountain if I wanted fucking mall pizza. They'd also regularly sneak off, leaving me alone, frightened and confused. Allegedly this was to help develop my sense of direction, self-determination, and world view. But I digress.
I took my first bite, looked quizzically around and said, "This tastes of nothing." And although that's really all there is to it, I'll go on in order to fill space. The best thing about the slice was its crust. While not good by any stretch of the imagination, it was fairly inoffensive and almost well seasoned. It's screen-cooked, though. The sauce was pasty and terrible but there wasn't much of it. The cheese really tasted of absolutely nothing. It was the most offensively unremarkable shit in the universe. I gave my girlfriend a bite and she said, "This is even worse than the pizza from Hibachi," which was so true I was forced to edit that review and change their 8 recirc rating to a 7.5, to balance things out in the world.
I can make no comment on anything else Sbarro offers, but their pizza is atrocious. Just go to Chik-fil-A or something.
Childhood memories can get lost.
8 recircs out of a possible 8 recircs (lower is better)
Sbarro - $3.523500 Oleander Dr # Fc5, Wilmington, NC 28403
Hibachi Grill & Supreme Buffet
Pizza! At a Chinese buffet! Fuck everything about this! I love it!
Holy shit, a Chinese buffet reviewed on a pizza blog. Fuck you because this is history in the making and you probably don't even realize it. There is no reason for me to review this fucking shit but confronted with pizza at a Chinese buffet I felt a calling not unlike Kevin Costner tripping balls in a cornfield. Avert your gaze, mortals:
Well it was dogshit awful. I guess it's just frozen pizza. I wasted some of my vast, priceless, inordinately sexy stomach space on this trash. And I did it just for you. You don't have to thank me, but you probably should. Tasteless cheese, chewy underdone crust, possibly some sauce in there. I ate this thing so fast I don't even know what else to say about it.
The good news is that the rest of Hibachi Grill's food is really good for the most part. The mac and cheese sucks, though. And the boneless spare ribs suck. Pretty much everything else was awesome, particularly the Hong Kong chicken. And they have bottles of Sriracha for you to guzzle, which is quite satisfactory.
This place is cheap and awesome. The main problem is that they have no booze. Which makes no sense whatsoever. Booze is more profitable than food, and it fills you up to boot. Booze also happens to be the bee's knees.
Come for the pizza, stay for the Americanized Chinese food.
7.5 recircs out of a possible 8 recircs (lower is better)
Hibachi Grill & Supreme Buffet - $6.59 + tax356 S. College Road, Wilmington, NC 28403
Hoobie’s NY Pizza & Hoagies
So, I again ventured to Hoobie's. This time on a Thursday, at like fucking 2 p.m. or something. Last time I went to Hoobie's it was on a Monday at around 3 p.m. On Mondays they allegedly open at 4 p.m. for reasons no sane person could ever come up with. Here are their alleged hours:
Fucking closed. I pray to Couch Boulder that this place is fucking closed for real, for good, forever and for the good of all mankind. They looked forever-closed inside; bullshit was strewn about. Messy bullshit idiotic crap. If that's simply how they leave the joint when they leave, they disgust me. I hate this fucking place. I hope you are closed and also dead, forever.
Come to think of it, the inside of Hoobie's looks a fair bit like the inside of Pizza Joe's off Independence which closed like a year ago after the owner's addict son derped out or something, went full crackhead and caused the place tank to hell, and justly so because it was fucking nauseating. That place is still stocked with random pizzeria shit just lying around, after maybe more than a year. Stupidest shit I've ever seen.
In other news, it looks like Rudinos off Military Cutoff is definitely closed and becoming a New Balance store or something. Vast improvement over that vapid shitbird pizza.
I love it when shitty pizzerias fail. I love the shit out of it.
Welcome to America, fuck you
I'm going to take this inopportune moment to discuss my dissatisfaction with two pizzerias. First of all, fuck both these places. Rarely do I have the opportunity to go to this section of town. When I'm forced here, I'm really fucking forced there. It's crummy.
The first pizza place is god damn Papa Bellas. I used to live a fucking tenth of a mile from this place. I went there once and it was alright. I heard they changed ownership while keeping the name. This makes sense because instead of a pizzeria this place is now a bar. Just a bar. And they're so lazy they kept the random, empty salad bar sitting in the corner. The deal with this place is that they were "out of dough" at 3pm. Alright. Enjoy not existing in six months. Fucking idiots.
Numero Dos. Hoobies, on Exchange aka The place on North College no one goes unless you are my fatass ex-roommate or someone that works in the expansive office complex which houses this place. Luckily for me, I went here after I went to Papa Bellas, and Hoobies was FUCKING CLOSED. AT 3:30PM.
Fuck this place to hell. I used to think this place was bad when I would come home from work, or from anything at all really, and find my roommate on the couch soloing a large Hoobies pizza in his lap. My view was fucking tainted! But regardless, this pizza looked like shit, I don't give a fuck. It used to look terrible. And now I know that on a certain workday they don't open til 4pm. And they're in a complex of office buildings. This place is run by idiots.
Fuck both of these places. Never go to them. Fuck these fucking places.